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Fernando Llano / Associated Press photo at the Wall Street Journal. Caption: “Venezuelan National Guard officers grabbing a television camera during a protest outside of the Supreme Court in Caracas on Friday.”
Colombia
- Jorge Enrique Melendez P., “El Drama de los Nukak Maku No Cesa” (El Tiempo (Colombia), March 28, 2017).
Many of the Nukak Makú people of south-central Colombia, who were first “contacted” in the late 1980s, were forced from their jungle territories by Colombia’s conflict. Now that the FARC conflict is over, guerrilla dissidences, landmines, and coca are still preventing their return.
El Salvador
- Nelson Rauda Zablah, “Presidencia Busca una Nueva Ley Que Permita a los Criminales de Guerra Evitar la Carcel” (El Faro (El Salvador), March 28, 2017).
El Salvador’s top court overturned an early-1990s amnesty for crimes committed during the country’s vicious 1980s civil war. Now, the FMLN government, advised by a Colombian lawyer who worked on the FARC talks, is working with the rightist opposition on a transitional justice plan that would reduce human rights abusers’ sentences.
Mexico
- Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodriguez Ferreira, David A. Shirk, “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2016” (Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, March 31, 2017).
A masterful analysis of violence and organized crime trends in Mexico. Places much blame for recent spike in violent crime on the Sinaloa Cartel’s deterioration, and notes that tensions over Trump’s policies “could undermine the close law enforcement and security cooperation achieved under the administrations of presidents George W. Bush (2000-2008) and Barack Obama (2008-2016).”
Paraguay
- Laurence Blair, “Paraguay ‘coup’: death of activist threatens to reignite protests” (The Guardian (UK), April 1, 2017).
One of two 2010s-style “soft coups” going on this week in South America. Blair is doing an excellent job of covering it from Asunción. His Twitter feed was amazing yesterday.
Venezuela
- Anatoly Kurmanaev, “Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Breaks with President Nicolás Maduro” (The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2017).
There’s actually no single good “explainer” analysis out yet about the political chaos in Venezuela since the Supreme Court usurped the opposition-controlled legislature’s power. The story is moving too quickly. I just chose the WSJ piece because it seems to be the most in-depth of recent ones in English.